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Major projects in 2000:
BioDemocracy - Coalition Work - Save Organic Standards - Food Safety and Irradiation - Food Agenda 2000

(1) BioDemocracy Campaign--Our genetic engineering campaign to drive GE
foods and crops off the market and covert US agriculture to organic. This
is our major project, to which we are devoting the majority of our staff
time and budget. This project includes public education, media work,
organizing protests and media events, leafletting supermarkets,
coalition-building, and helping organize shareholder actions at annual
corporate shareholder meetings. As part of this project we have helped
spearhead protests at FDA Hearings on genetic engineering in Washington,
D.C. and Oakland, California. We have also organized press events and
"Frankenfoods Dumps" at supermarkets in California, New York, and
Washington, D.C. Other Frankenfoods Dumps have taken place in Boston,
Baltimore, Albany, Kansas City, and other major metropolitan areas across
the United States. A major part of the BioDemocracy anti-GE campaign has
been (and will continue to be) to pressure large food corporations, the
"Frankenfoods Fifteen," to ban genetically engineered ingredients from
their products. In July, 2000 we will help organize anti-GE protests and
press events in two dozen states.

(2)Coalition Work: We currently participate in three national coalitions, the  Top
National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture (on organic standards), the
Genetic Engineering Action Network (a national anti-GE campaign), and a new
national coalition called the Genetically Engineered Food Alert (GEFA).
Ronnie Cummins sits on the national steering committee of GEAN and the
GEFA. We have an ongoing national telephone bank which has called 55,000
organic consumers since January, 1999 and have begun direct mail outreach
as well. In November, 1999 we did a national mailing to leading restaurant
chefs in conjunction with the Chefs Collaborative 2000 Organization, which
has resulting in approximately 200 chefs signing on so far to a call for a
moratorium on GE food.

(3) Save Organic Standards Campaign--Our ongoing campaign to prevent the
USDA from degrading organic standards and facilitating an "unfriendly
takeover" of the organic industry by industrial agribusiness and biotech
interests. We are continuing to distribute literature to natural food
stores and coops as part of this SOS Campaign. On March 8, 2000 the USDA
announced a second set of proposed federal regulations on organic
standards, which this time--unlike in 1998--have basically met the demands
of the organic community. Remaining vigilant however, we joined our allies
in the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture and organized and
catalyzed a massive response by 40,000 organic consumers, farmers, and
workers in the organic industry to the proposed organic rules--telling the
USDA not only to not back down on the proposed rules, but to strengthen
them further. The comment period on the USDA's proposed organic regulations
ended June 12, 2000.

According to the USDA they expect to publish final regulations on organic
foods sometime near the first of next year (2001) in the Federal Register.
Upon publication the final rules will come into force approximately 12
months later. If the final rules do not meet the expectations of the OCA
and the organic community once they are published, we'll have to either sue
the USDA in Federal Court or join the organic community and come up with
our own label and standards. In the meantime we recommend that consumers
stay tuned to our website <www.purefood.org> and our newsletter,
BioDemocracy News, for further developments.

(4) Food Safety and Irradiation Campaign--Our ongoing campaign to educate
and mobilize the public to oppose the dangerous practices of industrial
agriculture--including food irradiation, antibiotics in animal feed, animal
cannibalism, and toxic sludge. In February, 2000 the FDA and the USDA
announced new regulations on irradiated foods which will allow
institutional food services (schools, restaurants, hospitals, nursing
homes) to serve non-packaged irradiated foods with no labeling or
notification. As we did in 1999, we will continue to mobilize a national
petition and letter-writing campaign to oppose these moves by the
government, the nuclear industry, and large agribusiness corporations to
force a dangerous technology on the public and to prevent consumers from
knowing whether their food has been irradiated or not.

(5) Food Agenda 2000. We are carrying out a national petition, activist
identification, public education, and mobilization campaign to identify
5000 or more people in each Congressional District who agree with our
program to transform American agriculture: (1) Global moratorium on all GE
foods and crops; (2) Begin the phase-out of the most dangerous practices of
industrial agriculture (toxic pesticides, antibiotics in animal feed, toxic
sludge, irradiation, animal cannibalism, hormones, steroids etc.); and (3)
Convert at least 30% of US agriculture to organic by the year 2010. We are
utilizing the data base from the Food Agenda 2000 effort to build local
coalitions, to organize local actions, and to recruit OCA members and
volunteers. We are also generating citizen comments in support of a legal
petition filed on March 21, 2000 by the Center for Food Safety, the OCA,
and 50 other groups to pull all genetically engineered crops and foods off
the market and subject them to rigorous safety-testing.